Forty Guns

The Criterion Collection’s December announcements are up and MMC!‘s three-and-a-half-year old proposal has finally come to fruition with the release of Sam Fuller’s Forty Guns (1957)! Sharp-eyed film fans will note that this edition includes Criterion’s long-awaited hard media release of A Fuller Life, Samantha Fuller’s documentary on her father’s life and career. So, once again, you’re welcome film nerds.

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Forty Guns.

Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck) rules over her county in Arizona with an army of forty gunmen until gunslinger-turned-US Marshall Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan) and his brothers arrive, bringing law and order to Drummond’s corrupt empire. But when Jessica and Griff fall in love and Griff’s brother is murdered, loyalties become divided between romance, family, justice, and revenge. Written, directed, and produced by Samuel Fuller, Forty Guns explodes off the screen with audacious cinematography, psychosexual energy, and a hyperbolic story that unites style and substance in a muscular Western classic.

A new video essay on the film’s pre-production featuring filmmaker Jim Jarmusch reading archived memoranda from the 20th Century Fox archives

Stills gallery of photos, posters, lobby cards for American and international promotion

Original theatrical trailer

PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by filmmaker Allison Anders, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1957 review for Cahiers du cinéma, and excepts from Fuller’s autobiography, A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking